OpenSea ‘not aware’ of former exec’s involvement in $60M carpet drag
Non-Explosive Token (NFT) platform OpenSea has been hit with new allegations on social media by a former employee in 2015. He says he knows of no evidence to suggest he was involved in the infamous Anubisdao carpet-dragging in 2021.
On October 6th on X (formerly Twitter), an anonymous account tagged NFT Ethics OpenSea and asked former CEO Kevin Pawlak to respond to allegations that he was associated with and involved with the alias “0xSisyphus”. “Various Doubtful Business Relationships”.
1/ Dear @OpenSea, What do you think of your venture head Kevin Paulak's involvement in various highly questionable business dealings (eg Anubis) and pump and dump schemes under the alias @0xSisyphus (& 0xMagellan)? pic.twitter.com/GzIVLJirLE
— NFT Ethics (@NFTethics) October 6, 2023
Both NFT Ethics and blockchain analytics account Lookonchain 0xSisyphus, and thus Pawlak, allege that they played a key role in promoting the Anubisdao project to investors shortly before the project transferred the newly raised funds to a series of foreign wallets.
The NFT Ethics thread tried to explain Pawlak's alleged role in the AnubisDAO carpet drag as he pre-arranged with other developers and made the money through memecoin Pepe (PEPE).
However, an OpenSea spokesperson told Cointelegraph that he was not aware of Paulwak's involvement in such activities, but that Paulwak had a “limited scope” while working there.
“Kevin is a former employee who left the company in June 2023. His time at OpenSea was limited – he worked in a non-management position. We have no knowledge of his involvement with the projects in question.
According to the representative of the company, “Furthermore, we have no connection or information with the projects in question, because they were carried out before being in OpenSea.”
In October 2021, AnubisDAO collected 13,556 Ether (ETH) – worth $60 million at the time – from crypto investors. However, after 20 hours, the funds were sent to different wallet addresses, causing immediate losses to the investors.
Blockchain sleuth ZachXBT also appeared to throw cold water on the allegations, one of the “most off-the-curve” things the thread read.
He added that much of the thread appears to be based on a lot of speculation about 0xSisyphus' role in the alleged carpet-dragging, using “unrealistic events.”
That thread is one of the most moderately curvy things I've read. They make a lot of assumptions about unrelated events without facts.
FixedFloat is similar in terms of volume and other exchanges mentioned. Here is the April 2023 FixedFloat insider PEPE purchase I source address… https://t.co/0kG2M7DNVi
— ZachXBT (@zachxbt) September 29, 2023
0xSisyphus is understood to have offered a one-time reward of 1,000 ETH to anyone who can identify the wallet address that leaked the pool and contact law enforcement in both the US and Hong Kong, casting doubt on the new allegations.
Related: AnubisDAO pulls the rug and 13.5K ETH is flushed with Tornado Cash
“Is Cisipus guilty of gross negligence for lying about Team Anubis? Absolutely 100% likely to be a civil case for the victims,” ZackXBT wrote.
ZachXBT explains that negligence in this case is very different from stealing money from the project itself. “[As far as I know,] Sisyphus was the only group member who spoke to the group. [Department of Homeland Security]He said.
“You really think you didn't see him first and follow his movements?” ZachXBT asked.
He also explained that the two actors responsible for the loss of funds during the Anubisdao scandal were two anonymous users known as “Beerus” and “Ersan”.
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